Toy company Goldie Blox, which describe its goal as "to get girls building", produce construction toys aimed at girls.
Its new advertisement, uploaded to YouTube on November 17, has gone viral on social media, already accumulating over four million views.
In the ad, three girls are bored by the pink-and-purple princesses they see on TV.
Instead of opting for stereotypical toys, they get to work, and construct an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine out of the very pink and purple tea sets and feather boas the ad rails against.
The advertisement utilises a rewritten version of the Beastie Boys' song 'Girls', the original of which promotes sexist stereotypes:
“Girls to do the dishes/Girls to clean up my room/Girls to do the laundry/Girls and in the bathroom/Girls, that’s all I really want is girls.”
However, the altered version played in the ad reflects the feminist aspirations of Goldie Blox.
“Girls build a spaceship/Girls code the new app/Girls that grow up knowing/That they can engineer that/Girls, that’s all we really need is girls/To bring us up to speed it’s girls/Our opportunity is girls/Don’t underestimate girls.”
Women continue to be underrepresented in the fields of engineering and science in both tertiary study and the workforce worldwide.
A 2012 study on women in engineering in Australia concluded that progress toward greater participation in engineering by women has stalled.
Women constituted only 9.8 per cent of the engineering labour force and 16.6 per cent of degree completions in entry level university engineering courses.
